Illinois State Normal University - Index Yearbook (Normal, IL)

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The INDEX Page io He was of mixed ancestry. His father was Dutch and his mother was Irish. To the kinsman of XVilliam the Silent I have been accustomed to attribute the steadfastness of his purposes and the loyalty and devotion with which he worked them out. To his mother's race I ascribed the mirthful vein which ran thru a life of many sorrows like a thread of purest gold in a fabric of sober hues. His father was a sailor and beat about the world for years, meeting many strange adventures and some quite in- credible hardships. He had married in New York four years be- fore Enoch was born and in 1838 he imigrated to Illinois, set- tling within eight or nine miles of Bloomington. How much the stories of his interesting experiences may have stimulated the imaginations of his boys I cannot say. The eldest of his sons was tall, angular, rather awkward, but of excellent parts and of Fine repute thru all the country-side because of his manliness and exceptional reliabiity. He had a way of holding his head erect and of looking at some distant goal, as if he were native to the sea or to the wide expanse of the prairies. It was familiar to all who knew him, and as well, the earnestness of his penetrating eyes when unrelieved by the light of his playful humor. It was an impressive peculiarity, but when one learned the method of his life it was simple enough and singularly interesting, he had acquired from his sailor father the habit of guiding his course by fixed stars. His early education was limited. There was a rude school house with ruder benches and the school was taught on the half- subscription plan, for there was no free-school law yet in Illi- nois. There we were mates in the winter of 1852-3. It was a good school, as memory recalls it. The teacher was neat and precise and quite a bit of a scholar, and he was rigorous with the bigs boys and patient with the small ones. There we conned our lessons in the three r's and stood up in a row to spell the words in the old VVelJste1 ' and spoke pieces out of the readers on the Friday afternoons. And who shall say that we were not well employed ? VVhen a triHe over twenty be began to teach. After trying his hand and finding the work to his taste he went to the Illinois NVesleyan University for a term or two. Two years later he was teaching again and in the village where my parents lived. He was the best schoolmaster that the little community had ever known and when his first term was ended he was employed for another term and at his own price. It was an epoch-making experience for those of us who were his pupils. NVe did not a few things that were outside the common run. VVe parsed The Elegy and committed it to memory and learned to love the lines and to respond to the pensive melancholy of the sentiment. But

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Page 9 The INDEX E OCI-I . GASTMA T11143 Ixnlix does well to pay its tribute of respect to Ifnocli A. Gastman. In the Nor- mal School sphere of infiuence he was sev- eral firsts. He was first to enter, first to give a graduating ad- dress, first of the alumni to become a city superintendent, first of the alumni to become a member of the Board of Education of the State of Illinois, first to'be its president, first in length of service as a schoolmaster, and X, , first in the hearts of the Alumni Association. He was born at 54 Mulberry St., in the city of New York, on the fifteenth day of june, 1834. He died most suddenly and unexpectedly, in the Parker House, in Boston, on the second day of August, IQO7, while on a pleasure trip to Xew England with his wife. I first made his acquaintance in the early fall of 1851. It is an old and apt remark that the boy is father to the man. It was well illustrated in his case. XVhat he was at seventy was but an enlarged and enriched Enoch A. Gastman of twenty. Few young men that I have known manifested so positive and per- sistent and well-defined trend of character. In some way he had a good start and had it early. In the brief space allotted to this sketch it is not possible to do more than to allude to the most marked characteristics of his personality. Happily they were so easily distinguishable that the task is an easy one. I

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i i F' I Page 11 The INDEX best of all, he located for us some of the fixed stars that his long vision had discovered. Meanwhile he had managed another term at school, at liu- reka this time, and he liked what he was finding in the books. llc determined to go further and on the first day of the new Normal School, at Bloomington, he was there and enrolled for the course. That was a half century ago last fall. He finished his course with the first class in 1860, manifesting thru all of his work the same characteristics that marked him as a man-trustwfmrthiness, caution, persistence, good judgment, hatred of sham. The next September saw him at Decatur, master of the third grade Two years later he became the city's first superintendent and so con- tinued until the close of the school year in 1906-7. He was a plain man, plain in speech, plain in manners and plain in living. And it was always plain to see what he was about. He practiced publicity in all of his dealings with the pub- lic. He knew that he was the peoples' servant and he never for- got it, and he was frank and candid with his employers. They appreciated it and believed in him and stood by him all of the time. He held them to their duty to their children and looked them straight in the eye as he looked straight into his own eye, it is a strong man and a true man who can look steadily and with sincere respect into his own eye all of the time. He found some- thing there that he thoroly respected and he would not do it vio- lence nor would he permit another to treat it with any show of disrespect. It was the sense of moral obligation and it was to him the dearest thing in all the world. Rather than to disobey its voice he would have walked alone. He was the least pretentious of men, indeed, his modesty often led him to affectations of ignorance where he was wise. He so thoroly despised dishonesty of every kind that he was a rigorous censor of himself. He was a rare combination of con- servatism and radicalism, cherishing what was of worth in the old and rigidly scrutinizing the new yet quietly adopting it and working it out without talk about it. He was especially inter- ested in nature study and advocated it a third of a century ago. He was with .Xgassiz at Penikese in the school of which XVhit- tier wrote: H011 the isle of Penikese, Ringed about by sapphire seas, Fanned by breezes salt and cool, Stood the master with his school. His recreations were largely with his garden and his bees. He loved the fiowers which he cultivated in rich profusion and the home was decorated with them from the early spring when the crocus came until the frost sent them all into hiding.